News Releases & Research Results Development of an in vitro model to understand the cause of complete hydatidiform mole: Preventing choriocarcinoma during pregnancy

The research was led by graduate student Sota Takahashi, Assistant Professor Hiroaki Okae, and Professor Takahiro Arima of Department of Informative Genetics, Environment and Genome Research Center, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine.

• The authors demonstrated, for the first time, that they were able to successfully establish a culture of human trophoblast stem cells from complete hydatidiform mole* (TS^mole).
  *Complete hydatidiform mole is a type of abnormal pregnancy that involves loss of the maternal genome and duplication of the paternal genome. Complete hydatidiform moles can often lead to malignant progression such as choriocarcinoma, which forms when trophoblast cells that were part of the placenta become cancerous.
• TS^mole cells may be used in future studies to determine the mechanisms underlying the development of choriocarcinoma from complete hydatidiform moles. Such information should improve the diagnosis and provide a better understanding of complete hydatidiform moles in order to develop novel treatment strategies.

This R&D project was supported by AMED Advanced Research & Development Programs for Medical Innovation (AMED-CREST）.

The result of R&D was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on December 2.

Takahashi S., et al. TLoss of p57^KIP2 expression confers resistance to contact inhibition in human androgenetic trophoblast stem cells PNAS

DOI：10.1073/pnas.1916019116